Category Archives: Hunger

Ran across this story while surfing a local news radio site. Two guys who hopped a fence and dug through a grocery stores’ refuse bins have been charged with trespass and theft.

The DA wanted to charge them with felonies, but they plea bargained the charge down to a misdemeanor, even though they had to do 6 months of time behind bars (instead of the few days the DA offered for accepting the felony charge) for the lessor charge. I guess they knew that a felony conviction marks you as a criminal for life these days; and is frequently used to deny work, licenses, and any number of other things that government busybodies can think of to take away from those horrible criminals that clog the system.

I worked my way through high school and technical school at various grocery stores. Every night I worked it was my job to take the out of date food to the bins. When the food wasn’t damaged, but was just out of date, I frequently would set it aside for someone to pick up; that someone generally being me. As the eldest in a single parent family of five, I felt it was my job to help provide for the family. We never went hungry, in part because of the supplemental food that I diverted from being wasted in the city landfill.

My manager, on the other hand, took a pretty dim view of my theft of store goods. Never mind that they were going to throw it away, it was the principle of the thing. They said it was garbage, and it was going to be thrown away, not eaten by somebody who hadn’t paid for it. The few times he caught me setting food aside for later, he stayed behind to make sure I destroyed it before throwing it in the dumpster. If I refused, he would do it himself.

[this was the same idiot who locked me out of the store during a tornado because I was out in the parking lot when he decided to take shelter in the walk-in. He told me “I didn’t want anyone to be able to steal something while we were hiding. Stealing food in the middle of a tornado. Riiiiiight.]Are these guys criminals? Not to me. To me, they’re just a couple of hungry people who should have known better than to jump a fence. Now, to my manager on the other hand…

…I’m sure he would want those felons to pay for what they’ve done. I never knew that he had a sex change and became a DA in another state. There can’t be two people that stupid on the planet.